Jessica Silas was interested in video of wild weather Saturday night at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis.
The result was stunning images of a stage collapse that killed five people, a prime example of the democratization of "breaking" news coverage.
It is a basic form a journalism, just the pictures of what happened – no analysis or anything more. But that's an important cornerstone of news and a valuable addition to a lot of stories, like this one.
Silas supplied her video to CNN as one of its iReporters -- amateurs who provide their video to the news outlet. On Sunday afternoon, she was interviewed by the news channel's Fredrika Whitfield, telling her she didn't at all expect the tragedy.
"I was trying to film the weather actually, the lightning behind it and the wind," Silas told Whitfield.
Whitfield noted screaming in the video before the collapse. "So was there a sense that something very terrible was about to happen the moments before the stage collapsed?"
No, answered Silas.
"I don't think anyone actually expected for the stage to collapse, but when you hear the people screaming, it was because of the wind and the dust.
"In the beginning images of the video, you can see that the dust starts coming in. That's why I actually started recorded in the first place, is because I saw the people standing up and screaming and I saw the dust start coming. But no one, I ... I can't imagine anyone expected that the stage would actually fall down."
While she didn't imagine that, Silas had used her phone earlier, to keep up with severe weather that was reported on the way, telling Whifield, "About 20 minutes or so before I had noticed that the sky was getting a little bit dark. So I looked on my phone and saw that Indianapolis was in a severe thunderstorm warning."
Here's Silas' stunning video:
As long as we're talking about untraditional ways of providing news, the band Sugarland was supposed to take the stage on Saturday night, and the band tweeted after the collapse.
"We are all right. We are praying for our fans, and the people of Indianapolis. We hope you'll join us. They need your strength."
On TV: NBC says Radiohead will join Alec Baldwin in the Sept. 24 season premiere of "Saturday Night Live."
- TNT has ordered a 15-episode fifth season of "Leverage."
- USA has ordered a fifth and final season of Mary McCormack's "In Plain Sight."
- Syfy has renewed "Warehouse 13" for a fourth season.
- MTV has canceled "The Hard Times of R.J. Berger."
A highlight of the fall: One of the things that lures new viewers to public TV is a Ken Burns miniseries, and this fall's effort looks like a good one as the film maker takes on "Prohibition."
Here's the first trailer for the series:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
